A lot of you guys know that AI War was one of my favorite games of all time. Well, Arcen has another mini-expansion in the works, Ancient Shadows. This one sounds really interesting - one player can be a "Champion" and basically tool around the universe with a giant mega-ship with upgradable modules.
Check it out here:
http://arcengames.com/w/index.php/aiwar-ancient
Order it and you can jump directly into beta. It is only $3.99.
I completely adore AI War, but never got any of the expansions because the base game had so much content already. Might have to check this one out though.
I still don't have Light of the Spire.
There certainly is a lot of units & such in AI War. That's what makes it great IMO. I still want to dive deep back into AI War once I get the odd itching for some unusual RTS strategy-think. :D
I've been totally overwhelmed by whats on offer with the expansions. With each one I bought, I felt my knowledge, understanding and confidence in play ebb away. I like the sound of this new expansion, and I will no doubt get it, but it's going to take a herculean effort on my part to step into AI War again and feel any comfort. I've had to shelve the game, with a view to getting back to it, when I have oodles of time, and the patience and inclination to put the effort in to play. I used to get lost in the original AI War! Now there are so many interactions, you need an encyclopedic mind to be able to work out what ships do what. I think you'd be ok, if all you ever played for a month was AI War and you totally soaked yourself in the ship types and their advantages and disadvantages. But at the moment I haven't got a free month! Have to totally applaud Chris Park and his dedication to the game though. It's been constant development, directed by fan feedback, and astounding leaps forward in terms of presentation and mechanics. He's just outpaced me thats all. :)
Quote from: spelk on August 10, 2012, 01:06:06 PM
I've been totally overwhelmed by whats on offer with the expansions. With each one I bought, I felt my knowledge, understanding and confidence in play ebb away. I like the sound of this new expansion, and I will no doubt get it, but it's going to take a herculean effort on my part to step into AI War again and feel any comfort. I've had to shelve the game, with a view to getting back to it, when I have oodles of time, and the patience and inclination to put the effort in to play. I used to get lost in the original AI War! Now there are so many interactions, you need an encyclopedic mind to be able to work out what ships do what. I think you'd be ok, if all you ever played for a month was AI War and you totally soaked yourself in the ship types and their advantages and disadvantages. But at the moment I haven't got a free month! Have to totally applaud Chris Park and his dedication to the game though. It's been constant development, directed by fan feedback, and astounding leaps forward in terms of presentation and mechanics. He's just outpaced me thats all. :)
Same here. I just have too large a back log of games to devote the time and effort to learn how to play it proficiently. Same with Distant Worlds.
I could never get into this game no matter how hard I tried. It just never felt like a space strategy game and I never felt like the units were actually ships. It all just seemed so flat.
Quote from: Jarhead0331 on August 10, 2012, 01:36:26 PM
I could never get into this game no matter how hard I tried. It just never felt like a space strategy game and I never felt like the units were actually ships. It all just seemed so flat.
Heh. Bazinga!
I totally "got" his idea, and I spouted on many a time about just how clever the whole thing was. The 2d representation, seemed right, given the amount of units you could shift around the screen at any one time.
The whole Battlestar Galactica, mankind surviving against an ever aggressive AI, TOTALLY sold it to me, when it was first released. It was space RTS, done right. The higher level conquest strategy, had to be thought about, had to be done surgically, without provoking the AI to send huge swarms at you. You had to pick your route, you had to pick your battles, if you went for everything, you were going to be slaughtered. The tactical combat, was about managing large fleets of ships, splitting them, and flanking, surrounding, patrolling, striking with support.
The fact you could set up wormhole defensive mechanisms, using turrets with tractor beams, and long range missiles, or lasers. Sniper turret placement, gave you effective long range cover. Invest in shield turrets to coat your important structures in a protective bubble, that could soak up wave after wave whilst you readied fleets of fighters, bombers, or missile boats. All of this had me.
When the units started turning very specialised, and their use became very circumstantial. When the basic strategy began to change to encompass many interactions, the rock/paper/scissors stuff didn't cut it anymore. Then you needed to spend time, to learn about new ship types, new interactions, you could choose what tech was involved, but the choice was too plentiful, overwhelmingly so. Suddenly, if I didn't heavily invest my time, in learning these new developments, I simply couldn't use any of them. Expansion after expansion rolled along, update after update, change after change, and I lost any grasp of the mechanics. Sure I could still roll out the original ship types, but there was so much more to it now, and I always felt that I wasn't getting to any of the new content I'd just bought.
Perhaps I wrongly expected (or hoped) to be 'drip fed' new content, in a manageable way? But I don't think that's the way AI War delivers, you spend time familiarising, then you try stuff out, and explore.
The very enthusiasm and energy that had me totally hooked on the game after initial release, was what was swamping me with tech I couldn't assimilate, and now felt lost and overwhelmed. The tech tree isn't a tree, it's a food platter, with dishes from so many alien countries, you need an (American) football field to hold it all!
One day, I'll step back into it, with a determination to suss all the new stuff out, I should spend a few days on the AI War wiki, and learn it before even firing the game up. These new Champion ships sound brilliant, so perhaps this expansion is the one to tractor beam my attention mothership back to the game?
Quote from: spelk on August 10, 2012, 11:51:23 PM
One day, I'll step back into it, with a determination to suss all the new stuff out, I should spend a few days on the AI War wiki, and learn it before even firing the game up. These new Champion ships sound brilliant, so perhaps this expansion is the one to tractor beam my attention mothership back to the game?
If anyone happens to jump back into this large platter of specialties, let me know. That would probably encourage me to soak my brain in all the info overload again; I actually enjoy having more 'stuff' than I know what to do with. I really enjoy the 'surgical' strategy required, it makes for some tough decision making and lots of cause-effect based on those decisions. It actually feels more like a game system intended for solitaire play, if it were a tabletop.
Then, perhaps, we could get some co-op going. A very fortunate thing about
AI War is how much you can scale the difficulty, so the ruthless AI doesn't kick us too much while we're down. :D
Anyone tried the expansion since release? I bought the original game a year or so ago and today I bought the Pack that was on sale with all the expansions except the new one. I share you guys' trepidation with this game, it is pretty overwhelming...though I hope to give it a whirl.
It is so cheap I might buy a copy for a friend, it seems like it would be a great multiplayer game.
Quote from: republic on October 19, 2012, 08:14:36 PM
It is so cheap I might buy a copy for a friend, it seems like it would be a great multiplayer game.
I can vouch for that. I played it with a couple of friends for a month or two during late beta/early release and had a blast. :)